It's Not Enough
by Aisling Yinyr Ngaio
Summary: Post Ep201. Derek's anguish at losing Meredith because Addison showed up and ruined everything for him...


**It's Not Enough**

"_It's not enough."_

Those were the last words she said to him that night. As if the day wasn't going bad enough, it just had to go from bad to worse. First his adulterous wife appeared with no warning in Seattle, just as he was about to take Meredith out to dinner and confess his marital status to her. Because Addison took the "moment of confession" away from him, Meredith had been avoiding him like the plague all day, although he couldn't blame her. He _had_ been careless and selfish, not telling her about his secret until some other stranger stabbed her with it. Maybe it was because he really liked Meredith a lot, maybe even _love_, and wanted to keep her beside him until he was forced to reveal what he had been hiding from her from the first.

He didn't want to hurt her by confessing, but in the end he hurt her more by not doing so early enough.

And now, it was too late.

He desperately wanted to erase that pained look from her face, especially in her eyes, an expression that didn't falter even after he'd bitten the bullet, bared his dark soul to her and confessed everything. He could only watch as she left, with a last, meaningful look at him that spoke more loudly than her words did.

He'd never felt this way before. Even after he found out Addison cheated on him with Mark, he'd never felt so… _helpless_. Flitting around his trailer, coming in and out of it, just trying to find something to occupy his hands, his mind, nothing seemed to work. She was always there, everywhere he went.

He felt like a caged animal, tortured to the point of dementia.

That night, when he went to bed, even his exhaustion from working all day, not to mention coping with the newfound tension in Seattle Grace Hospital by the appearance of his estranged wife, could help him sleep. Instead, he tossed and turned all night, missing the warmth of her body and her soul. He missed making love to her, holding her tightly against him long after, falling asleep in each other's arms and waking up to her annoying alarm clock with her snuggled against him.

He turned and buried his face against his pillow, but all he succeeded in doing was reminding himself of the time he started opening up to Meredith by bringing her here, where he had allowed no one else to visit during his ownership. That was the actual reason why he didn't ever voluntarily brought her back with him to his trailer. It was too quiet, too lonely. Too dead. Lifeless. Not to mention his fear that she would turn away from him if he revealed too much of himself, the side of him he never showed in the hospital. Yet he followed his instincts that day, led Meredith to his world, and instinct hadn't lied. She accepted it, and him, wholeheartedly. And more than anything else, her mere presence drove away the loneliness, the haunting sadness that had always accompanied him through the nights in his trailer.

But now, he was paying the price for choosing the easier way out, of not telling and just letting things flow where they did. He never liked making life-altering decisions. He'd run if he could, and right here, right now, he preferred things the way they were, before Addison appeared out of nowhere and ruined everything that mattered to him. Yet the choice had been taken from him. And he was back to where he began: a silent trailer with a yearning soul, ten times worse now that he'd had a taste from heaven.

He wanted her back. He wanted to make everything right, and to his mind, he had, but she didn't accept it. "_It's not enough_," she said. He only hoped she would come around soon. And by God, he would do whatever he could to have her back with him again.

In the meantime, he would be counting the seconds until Addison's departure from Seattle. Seeing his almost-ex-wife intentionally singling Meredith out was irritating and unsettling to the extreme, as if he was the one at fault, not Addison, and that she was trying to teach Meredith a lesson about sleeping with him.

Yet as he closed his eyes, Meredith's face swam into view once more, echoing her last words to him into the night:

"_It's not enough_."

What else could he do?

_– Finis –_


End file.
